Posts Tagged ‘Brass Ecstasy’
From the most recent guest post at NPR’s A Blog Supreme.
A Call To Arts
by Dave Douglas
It’s good to see arts and especially jazz philanthropy back in business, thinking about what to fund and how best to fund it and not so much about how to punishing artists who use government money to smear their bodies in chocolate or worrying about just how in particular they plan to use that crucifix. There’s a new director at the National Endowment for the Arts named Rocco Landesman who is more interested in putting on shows; The Doris Duke Foundation and Mary Flagler Cary are out with innovative initiatives; and the alphabets — MTC, CMA, AMC, NYFA, NYSCA — are all looking at ways of giving jazz and related music a place at the table. All I can say is, Thank You. Finally. At long last, we can sit down and have a decent fight over real pieces of the pie.
Helping artists and communities is more important than cracking down on profanity. I was reminded of this the other day when my drummer Nasheet Waits was sent to overweight/oversize baggage for the third time even though his cymbals are no bigger than most bags (smaller than many!) and weighs easily within the range of your average over-packed summer traveler. (I mean their bags.) The cymbals just look different. Nasheet displayed admirable poise, while I was about to explode with the kind of filth that would make Rahm Emanuel blush. It was probably just a better idea to get the cymbals on their way down through the baggage mill.
Arts are important to people’s lives. Vincent Chancey grew up in a foster home, and when his public school gave him a chance to play music he chose the weirdest looking instrument he could find. A French horn man was born, even though there’s nothing French about that horn, and even Congress wanted to change the name to Freedom Horn a few years back. But with just that smallest push, Vincent developed an idiosyncratic personal style on the horn that led to a career with Sun Ra, Lester Bowie and Diana Krall among many others. Now if we could just get him to put the thing down. Vincent’s son Bahij is headed to Yale in the fall, on a scholarship to study architecture.
In 1990 I wasn’t sure where I fit into a scene polarized by young lions, hardcore downtown avant-garde and a livelihood playing weddings, bar mitzvahs, jingles and brisses. That was the year I received an individual artist grant for composition from the National Endowment for the Arts (funding of individual artists was discontinued in 1996). It meant a lot, even if only that there was a societal value to the creative work that I really wanted to do. My musically inclined but somewhat conservative father was scandalized. (”My tax dollars are going to What?!?!”)
Are the arts controversy-free? Clearly my father didn’t think so. No, the arts aren’t all clean, but neither is life itself. Now there’s the Internet, keeping kids aware of all that’s going on around them in the world if you can get them to look away from the screen for more than a few seconds. If these initiatives have their way, when they do look away they will see arts in addition to schoolwork. It’s not safe looking at a computer screen all day, or perhaps being an artist, but there are other dangers out there, like swine flu, sexting, contaminated vegetables, Octomoms, municipal rackets marketing human kidneys, not to mention Town Hall meetings. A little controversial artwork is the least of our worries.
We were lucky enough to have Geoff Countryman on tour with Brass Ecstasy in Europe this summer. Upon return, we were sent a boatload of clips from each of the bands performances as well as some candid shots of classic on-the-road happenings captured by Mr. Countryman. So we assembled a little montage for your viewing pleasure. As you watch, you will be hearing a track from the On Stage download series we put up last month called “Spirit Moves.”
Also, at the GreenleafMusicHQ YouTube page, we’ve made a new playlist compiling all the Brass Ecstasy videos — the live Tiny Desk Concert, this montage, as well as the in-studio videos from the DVD part of Spirit Moves.
Enjoy.
The Brass Ecstasy Tiny Desk Concert made it to the front page on YouTube with now over 85,000 views. With 187 comments posted so far you get a wide variety of opinions on the short set.
Here’s just a few…
“Being a typical modern teenager, I never knew a brass ensemble would ever sound this pleasant to listen to until now. Thanks NPR for posting this
”
“you guys are awesome if you really work on that you be playing pro.”
“Best 17 min and 53 secs i spent ever”
“the trumpet players’ ray bans are sick.”
“man i love that trombone player”
“where is the vocals?”
“Thanks for the political jab at Bush, Douglas. Couldn’t help yourself, right? Twilight of the Dogs. What a clever, dyslexic title. 1-20-09 was such an inspirational day for you. Transfer of power, and all that. Here it is roughly seven months later. R U proud of the job your messiah is doing? So vastly superior to Bush, right? Uh huh. obama and his administration remind me a lot of your music. Cataphonic. Ever hear of separation of music and politics? Try it sometime. It’s nice.”
“they should play ska music, cause we all know the best music involving horns is ska, true story.”
“i agree with chewbacca”
Spirit Moves has been a pleasure to release and work on. Kudos to all who helped and are continuing to help spread the word. And with the preorder long since past, the orders shipped out (more coming in daily, thank you!), we thought to gather some of our promotional material and news together in one post. And here it is.
Brass Ecstasy: On Stage
First, most recently, we’ve released two sets from Brass Ecstasy’s record release shows in NY. Each contain new tunes not found on SM or via our Subscription series. Both are available as MP3s or FLACs. If you preordered SM, you received an email from me this morning with a link to the 9:30 show on June 19th. We’re happy to have been able to get you this music and hope you enjoy it. Check the Brass Ecstasy tour page for their upcoming European tour dates.
Both sets available here. Also included is a bundle with both sets and a Deluxe Spirit Moves that saves you some money.
Sheet Music
These charts are some of my favorites. Here is a sample of the score format. Included with the full scores are charts of all the individual parts for each tune. We’ll most likely have an update for you soon.
Video
We’ve heard from so many of you regarding how much you like the DVD from the Spirit Moves Deluxe edition. We have to give props to Jem Cohen and Christoph Green for making this happen. Here are all 4 videos we’ve released on the web. More available on the aforementioned DVD.
Fresh off the band’s run at the Jazz Standard, Brass Ecstasy head down to DC for a show this evening at Blues Alley. Tickets available here. Before the show, they’ll be stopping by NPR for a Tiny Desk Concert — a live performance on the 5th floor of NPR headquarters. The performance will be video streamed live at 3:30PM EST. Watch it here.
We announced the preorder of Dave’s newest record a couple weeks back. The record is streaming in full HERE along with a video segment from the DVD. With the official release date is right around the corner (June 16th), we have some new news to bring to the table.
There are various packaging options we’ve put forward for this title. They range from a CD, to a Deluxe CD/DVD with live video from the studio sessions, to a complete package which bundles together the CD, DVD, Sheet Music, the new Greenleaf hat, and more. The response to these packages has been great and we appreciate everyone’s support and kind words.
Now for the update…
With all preorders, we will be including a free live set from the upcoming Brass Ecstasy shows at the Jazz Standard in NYC. This set will automatically show up for download in the accounts of everyone who preorders Spirit Moves in any of the packaging options – this includes all who have already put in their order. But this offer is ONLY for preorders. Once the release date hits (again, June 16th), folks who order will be able to purchase the set separately.
Subscribers – There will be another set recorded. And this set will be exclusively for you. We’re extremely happy to have had so many new Subscriptions and re-Subscriptions in the last month. The Subscriber Edition of Spirit Moves is still the best deal in terms of how much music and how much inside-access you can get with your preorder.
More news sooner than later. To stay current with our news, sign our email list and set yourself up with the RSS feed (top right of the page) for these posts.
The first installment of a 3-part exclusive video stream at magnetmagazine.com hit last night. The first video is of Brass Ecstasy in the studio recording the track Great Awakening.
Click here to stream Great Awakening.
Each of the next two Tuesday’s will see an update, the final video posting on the Spirit Moves release date, June 16th. We’ll keep you posted.
Click here to reach the Spirit Moves preorder page where you can stream the full record and explore the different package options for this title.
